


there's something about you that really reminds me of money

by ballantine



Series: Graceland [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, M/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 09:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18870439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: Pirate crews were unsettlingly democratic, and the spirit of equality didn't stop at the tallying of votes – the men expected him to be one of them. Fraternization wasn't required, but Mr. Gates had looked very serious when he said the men would expect to see him out and about in town. Holing up in a house, keeping himself apart – they'd start to mutter about airs.Airs, for fuck's sake. Some days he was sure he was in hell.(Pre-series AU: John Silver arrives in Nassau ten years early and meets an off-balance James Flint adjusting to a life of piracy.)





	there's something about you that really reminds me of money

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "I Know What I Know" by Paul Simon.

“Hello James,” Miranda said, dangerously pleasant as she handed him a cup of tea. “How was your day.”

Yesterday he took his first prize as captain of the Walrus. A substantial victory and even more substantial haul – no crew dead and each man rich enough to momentarily forget he was hated by the rest of the world. But today –

“Uneventful. Good weather. I'm now a pirate captain.” He took the cup and noticed at the same as she the dried blood under his fingernails. It hadn't been visible in the dim light of the cabin, and on the open deck he hadn't paid them any attention.

He curled his fingers around the cup, concealing, and they both looked away.

“And yours?” he remembered belatedly to ask.

He was still standing in his boots and coat just inside the door. He felt a little dazed, as one did upon stepping out under the midday sun after spending too many hours inside the dark belly of a ship. His manners were slower to adjust than his eyesight.

“Oh, it's been grand,” Miranda said with forced cheer, rounding the table back to the range. “I started a garden.”

James thought of the mess of torn up vegetation and dirt he'd seen as he approached the cottage. He thought a wild boar had perhaps come along. “A garden.”

“Indeed: growing my own food! People do it all over the world. I thought it might be diverting.”

That their diet in this place was fairly dire by her old standards went unsaid. She'd never had occasion to cook much in her previous life, and his culinary skills were based more on quantity and averting mutiny than domestic bliss.

“You kept a garden at the estate in the country,” he said after a moment.

“Roses,” she confirmed. “But one doesn't plant a garden for beauty here.”

It was the closest she'd come to uttering a complaint in weeks, and even this wistful comment was paired with a self-aware wry smile. He met her eyes and his throat went tight. He didn't think he had much conversation left in him.

But Miranda seemed aware of this too, for she briskly turned away and began assembling a second table setting for dinner.

“I can't stay,” he made himself say.

He watched Miranda set a bowl down. Her head remained bowed, but her spine was otherwise painfully straight. He stepped closer and hastened to explain, “Mr. Gates implied it would be best for the men to see me on the street after taking our first prize, for – to encourage recognition and unity, or something.”

What he'd said exactly had been an aghast _you can't hide away in the countryside with a book, are you mad?_ James had promised to heed the man's counsel when he backed him for captain, so here they were.

In many practical ways, commanding a pirate vessel was no different than a ship of the line. But the social aspect couldn't be more different. Pirate crews were unsettlingly democratic, and the spirit of equality didn't stop at the tallying of votes – the men expected him to _be_ one of them. Fraternization wasn't required, but Mr. Gates had looked very serious when he said the men would expect to see him out and about in town. Holing up in a house, keeping himself apart – they'd start to mutter about airs.

 _Airs_ , for fuck's sake. Some days he was sure he was in hell.

“But I wanted to stop back here because – ”

“You thought I might hear the ship had returned, and worry when you didn't show,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

“I thank you for your concern, James, but you needn't have bothered. To hear anything I would need to talk to someone else, and that's a rare enough occurrence.”

A shared acknowledgement sat between them, unspoken; this was all so very different than it used to be, when he was still a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. From the way he came skulking to her door like a stray, to the state of their hands – soil embedded in the creases of her palm and in his – well, he always had blood on his hands, but he used to be better at washing it off.

He didn't apologize before taking his leave. Perhaps he felt he had nothing to apologize for; perhaps he knew it was months too late for the only apology that would've mattered.

* * *

“My favorite captain!” Whipstaff Sam cried, wildly inebriated as he shoved a pint into Flint's hand.

Whipstaff was old enough to think every man on the island under the age of forty was a grandson to be spoiled, and just stupid enough to be forgiven the liberty taken. (Flint, who had never before in his life received a slap on the back, had been violently uncertain whether he should cut the man down for daring to touch him; he was saved from what would surely have been an unpopular overcorrection by Mr. Gates taking him aside and explaining matters, i.e. Whipstaff's lack of wits.)

Still: toleration was not the same as acceptance. Flint kept the pint but swiftly excused himself from Whipstaff's vicinity. He hoped the move would appear stern and aloof, and not merely desperate.

 _Try not to reveal you think you're better than them_ , Mr. Gates had advised. The man was disapproving, but too good a quartermaster to not support Flint's captaincy. Because the truth was, of course, that Flint was better. He was the captain, and one of the best naval tacticians Britain had recently produced. In the Navy, no Able Seaman questioned whether a commissioned office was _better than him_.

Nassau was often an absurd place.

The interim population of the tavern was at least half Walrus men. They were raucous and boastful, all the nerves of the fight replaced with the overconfidence of survival. They had no brothers to mourn that night. And if any of the merrymakers suffered from a passing image of a face they cut down the day before, well – the bottle offered mercy.

Flint killed four men the day before, including the captain of the other ship, a Dutch man who'd offered his sword before feinting with it in a wild, hopeless lunge. Apparently honor was for privateers and navies, and the reminder stoked Flint's fury. So he took the sword and offered it right back by running the man through the gut. The last of the fighting stopped with the crumpling of his body and the pirates – Flint's men – all cheered. Call and respond on the quarterdeck, a bloody shanty; but that part wasn't so different than a battle in the Navy. It bothered him.

He made himself walk through the crowd instead of along the periphery. For every look of recognition he received another of stifled fear, and he supposed that would have to stand for respect. It was still a strange thing, forcing himself to stand up and be seen by these people. Be seen and be counted among them.

He found port in a corner near the end of the bar. His ship's master was there, hunched protectively over a glass of dark liquid. His curls were plastered to his forehead by sweat, and he looked upon Flint with a glazed lack of recognition – or so Flint assumed until he spoke.

“We are natural enemies, you know,” Mr De Groot informed him.

The man appeared to be melting. Only strategic support from his crooked elbows on the bartop lent his figure the appearance of being vertical.

“I don't know that,” Flint said. His tone was mild but every sense he had was at attention, waiting for the attack. Enemies: what could the man mean by that? Dutch and English? Normal and invert – and if the last, how did he know?

“Every ship's captain is the bane of its master. I get her fixed her up – you go and smash her against another ship. I fix her up again. We,” De Groot said with a grave, lurching dignity, “shall never be friends.”

Flint left him to it.

He was offered and accepted another two rounds of drinks on men from the Walrus, and then paid for a round for the whole room, which was met with a hearty cheer. At least no one thumped him on the back; he subtly sought to avoid Whipstaff's eager wingspan.

An hour passed before he deemed his standing among the crowd sufficiently bolstered, allowing him to move along.

Night had fallen by the time he let himself out of the third establishment. Lit torches served as streetlights and seemingly offered more shadow than light to walk by.

Nassau in the dark was possibly even more alien than during the day. London was by no means a clean or even particularly civilized city, not by the impossible standards set by Whitehall, but one could easily keep to the right boroughs and ignore the criminal activities flourishing in the underbelly. Here, everything was the underbelly.

Public drunkenness was a given. Sexual cavorting required a sturdy upright surface and sometimes not even that, but aside from the occasional leer, the people on the street walked past countless acts of indecency. In Nassau, everything carnal came with a businesslike patina. Flint could not tell if that was more honest, or simply another flavor of etiquette.

“You look far too lost in thought for a man with full pockets,” a voice said, startlingly close.

Flint turned slowly – for he was, perhaps, feeling those last pours of rum – and met the dark eyes of a young man standing a few feet away against the opening of an alley.

“Are you addressing me, sir?” he said. When the young man's eyebrows shot up, Flint realized his mistake. But it was too late to bark out a more appropriate greeting. Grimacing, he said thickly, “Oh, fuck off,” and turned to go.

“Wait,” the stranger said, laughing. He pushed off the wall and jogged over. “I've never been called sir before. I quite like it, do it again.”

He was slightly shorter than Flint, and formed in a way that spoke of an inconsistent diet. But his eyes were bright and his face – lovely, rather. Flint was in no state to be walking with him; the ache in his chest, ever-present since he left England a few months past, gave a warning pulse.

“Fuck off,” he said again, but the words came out more moody than threatening.

He should retire. Gates could not fault him for his showing, and evidently he was now drunk enough to do more damage than good. Before the night was out he'd end up either murdering a man or uttering _pardon me_ at an inopportune moment. There was no in-between.

But instead of fucking off, the man shoved his hands in his pockets and adjusted his pace so he was strolling alongside Flint.

“I'm new to these shores,” he said cheerfully, as if Flint had asked. “And looking for gainful employment.”

“I'll give you two pieces of eight to go away and leave me alone.”

The fleeting tempted look induced by this offer was quickly replaced by intrigue. “A man who'll give away two dollars either has more than he could ever need – which seems unlikely – or much more coming his way soon.”

So Flint discovered the one street rat in the new world who knew about delayed gratification. That seemed about right for his luck that evening. Flint threw him one more look of warning and ducked into the next tavern.

* * *

Two hours later and he felt like a ship's boy again, eleven and meekly reporting to the master for an appraisal of his performance.

“I've heard good things,” Mr. Gates told him. “They like that you can hold your liquor.”

“Was that in doubt?” Flint asked dubiously. He'd received his first ration of grog was when he was eight.

“It's important.”

They were sitting at a table in Guthrie's bar, which was well-lit and slightly better controlled than the other joints in town. Despite the copious flow of drink and volume of the chatter, it was the best place to talk business – all in all, a surprising feat, for it was also run by a girl.

“Do the men find me approachable?” asked Flint.

Gates frowned. “God, no.”

He nodded, relieved.

Gates looked past his shoulder and recognition filled his face. He beckoned and said to Flint, “I've found a new crew member, said he worked salvage in the harbor at Santo Domingo: a good diver.”

It was the irritating man from the street. He smiled at Flint as if it was their first encounter, and in proper light his eyes turned out to be a very clear blue.

“John Silver,” the man said, offering his hand.

Flint ignored it. “Can he fight?” he asked Gates.

“Can you fight?” Gates asked Silver.

“I can cook. I heard you needed a cook.” Silver's smile fade rapidly as he looked between them. He added uncertainly, “I'm a very good cook?”

Flint looked at Gates, who sighed. “Roberto was pinched by Teach. At the moment we don't have anyone except Larch, and he can barely peel a potato.”

“I can definitely peel a potato,” said Silver, encouraged. Flint's estimation of his intellect was falling by the second.

Gates leaned forward over his pint. He said in an undertone, “I'm sure you know, the crew's morale can fluctuate terribly at sea if their food is no good. Given the sensitive nature of your takeover, I thought it best...” He left the sentence dangling, as his best thought shifted uneasily on his feet beside them.

“Fine,” Flint said finally. He felt very tired as he got to his feet, and this weight only seemed to drag more heavily as he noticed Silver following him out the door.

Outside, he cut away from the street and started heading for the harbor, the clash of voices giving way to the crash of waves. He could kip on the Walrus tonight; the captain's cabin was now his, after all. The sand beneath his feet felt thick and resisted his every step.

“Is there a reason you're following me?” he said after a few minutes. He heard the edge in his voice and wondered how Silver could miss it.

Clearly Captain Flint needed to work on becoming more terrifying. Perhaps he should shave the beard. Keep the mustache? Change the mustache. He'd ask Miranda.

Silver said, “You're headed for the ship, are you not? I thought I might avail myself of a sleeping berth, now that I am an official member of the crew.”

Flint only grunted in weary acknowledgement. He was content to leave the matter at that, but Silver continued, quite conversational, “You seem very tense. Mr. Gates was telling me your captaincy is relatively new, and I'm sure the burden it places on your shoulders is considerable. I wanted to let you know that if I ever might be of service, you only have to let me know.”

Ah, Flint thought, brought up short; so it was like that. For the first time, the night was looking up.

He's never done anything like this before, so he didn't know if he was going about things the wrong way as he steered the other man to a spot among the rocks just west of the harbor. Silver was compliant up until Flint backed him against a boulder, at which point he – yelped.

Flint paused. The hand he'd put over the other man's trouser laces suddenly felt awkward.

“Was this not the service you were referring to?” he said.

“You think I'm a – ”

Flint shifted back, frowning. “Well, not anymore. Your reaction rather gave it away.”

“But – _why_?” He seemed more baffled than offended.

“I suppose it was your manner. You were overly familiar.”

“Are people really so terrified of you, you assume anyone with a friendly word must be expecting coin in return?”

Silver didn't seem to even realize he was still pressed up against the boulder, arms raised and hips angled out. He was perfectly content to argue in such a state. It was like his head was a different party to his body.

“You joined my crew,” Flint reminded him.

He boggled. “I wasn't aware it was a harem.”

Heat stole over Flint's face, and he was glad for the darkness. “No, I mean – you joined my crew, you'll get paid. Seems a bit much to protest the purity of your intentions when you finished the evening with a new position.”

The last few words were drawn out, for Flint was a little distracted by the slight bulge at the front of the other man's trousers.

Silver followed his gaze and said, a little sheepish, “So it's been a while. And the crew of my last ship were not so,” he paused and squinted at Flint, “amenable seems to be the wrong word here, but it's all I have.”

“I could be amenable,” Flint said quickly. There should be one benefit tonight for the headache he'd have tomorrow.

Silver dropped his arms down to his sides, but slowly, as if he wasn't sure Flint would permit it. He was for once serious-faced and keen on searching Flint's expression. Whatever he saw there must have satisfied the equation he was calculating in his head, for he glanced back to the harbor and only said:

“I hear the captain gets his own cabin?”

* * *

It was good that he was drunk, because when he is drunk there is only the feeling of another mouth and warm hands and a strong thigh between his legs. When he is drunk there is no intrusion of memory, no bittersweet recall of another curling his hands around James's wrists or ducking his head to cover James's mouth with his own, no afterimage of making love in a bright room, no afterglow of the freedom.

There is only the darkness of the cabin and the loud, ragged panting of two men, and when he is drunk he finds that exciting rather than unbearable.

Still, the line between Flint and James wavered indistinct. Flint tightened a fist into Silver's curls and pulled until the pale jut of his adam's apple was on display, but James was the one who pressed his lips to it and reveled in the feeling of the other man's working throat. Flint gripped with bruising force but James was always slipping over the stern, transparently hungry for touch, to be soothed and soothe in turn.

He had Silver on his back on his bed, stripped to the waist and trousers pushed open to reveal his cock when the other man shifted beneath him, skittish. Flint glanced up from where he was sucking a mark into the depression of his pelvic bone, and he thought the other man looked unnerved.

“Word of advice,” Silver said, a little hoarse. “If you're trying to convince people you're frightening, don't take them to bed.”

Flint flinched slightly, the tumble of his hair brushing against Silver's stomach with the motion. But he said nothing in reply; he was too caught up in the moment to feel the full sting of failure yet. James was unstoppably tender in bed. He hadn't known another way of being intimate with another in a very long time.

Rather than let him return to his ministrations, Silver drew him close with his legs and finished the job with his arms, until Flint was cradled against his body, their cocks flush together. He arched his back and rolled his hips and his hands travelled the length of Flint's back as if he was feeling for the edges.

“C'mon,” he whispered to Flint. “Please, please – ”

Unable to bear it for much longer, Flint worked a hand between them and finished him off as quickly as he could. It was easier, in the dazed silent seconds after Silver came, to wet his hand on his belly and work himself to completion.

Afterwards, he looked up from doing the laces of his trousers and said, “You make a joke of this to anyone on the island, and I'll cut your throat.”

Silver paused in the act of pulling on his shirt, something like fear finally crossing his face. Flint sought vainly to feel triumph at its appearance.

(Where once he hid his greatest joy from society, now he concealed his deepest fear, the dread of his own brutality. A mask for a mask; the switch had been almost seamless.)

“In this hypothetical situation,” Silver said slowly, not seeming to be able to stop himself, “Am I attempting to make a joke about accepting money for sexual favors? A joke I am somehow _not_ the butt of?”

Put that way, it sounded unlikely. But still: “You don't seem the type to feel shame.” Then Flint blinked and his fingers tripped over his laces. He cleared his throat, which was dry.

“Have no use for it,” Silver admitted easily, completely unaware of any strange pause. “But I'm not a fool either, and telegraphing one's intimate business is unwise, even in a place like this.”

Flint nodded, still distracted.

“So we're agreed?” Silver pressed. Flint looked up, blinking. “No need to share this with any others? We can keep this arrangement strictly between me and you?”

Arrangement?

“Now wait a moment,” Flint started, getting to his feet. But he was moving too slow, or speaking too thick, or something, because Silver was across the room and at the door before he could finish his sentence.

Silver looked back once, and his wide smile would've earned him a smack had he been closer. “Thrilled to be on the team, Captain,” he said, and was gone in the next second.

Flint collapsed back against his pallet and muttered a curse into his hands, which had somehow found their way to his face and refused to budge.

* * *

“Hello James,” Miranda said, unsympathetic of his pallor and red eyes as she handed him a cup of tea. “How was your night.”

James set the cup down, let his coat drop by the door, and wrapped his arms tightly around her. She was still in her dressing gown. He'd ridden out at first light to be home before she woke.

After a moment, her hands found their way to his back; one covered a shoulder blade and the other clasped the back of his neck. He shut his eyes against the bright morning light.

James thought: _I don't want to be a fearsome pirate captain. I don't want to have to intimidate men into following me or drink them into a stupor to win their respect. I don't want to operate this body and forget I have a heart._

“Uneventful,” he said at last, releasing her and picking up the tea once more. “I now have a pirate crew.”

He met her sharp, curious gaze. He tried for a smile.

“And yours?”


End file.
